


To Be Your Valentine

by mrsvc, sinstralpride



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Angst, Multi, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsvc/pseuds/mrsvc, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinstralpride/pseuds/sinstralpride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Sheldon tries to make Penny a Valentine's Day card.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Your Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Sin and Jackai read xkcd, write fic, ship everything. DO NOT BE ALARMED.
> 
> Also, major thanks to damalur for the amazing, fast, and life-saving beta.

  
"What are you getting Penny for Valentine's Day?" Leonard asked, barely glancing over his shoulder from his spot at the computer desk. He closed yet another window about artist's charcoal, unhappy with the reviews on that particular brand.

"I believe," Sheldon said, the same distracted indifference in his voice as he typed on his own computer, "the answer is nothing."

"Come on, Sheldon." Leonard frowned to his computer, deciding against the pastels and going back to the charcoal pencil sets. "You have to get your girlfriend something."

"I find the holiday itself, at least its modern interpretation"--Sheldon hit backspace a few times--"to be distasteful. It is the invention of the greeting card company."

With a touch of smugness Leonard replied, "I made Stuart's and my reservations three weeks ago." They were good reservations too, if he did say so himself. Dinner and a show at a small performance art theater that was attempting a liberal interpretation of the life and times of Jack Kirby. Even if the show was a total disaster, Leonard knew he'd be rewarded for his efforts with charcoal smudged across his cheeks and clavicle, quickly erased by the mischievous fingers that had put it there in the first place.

"Yes, but your relationship is an anomaly," Sheldon said without even blinking.

"Excuse me?" Leonard said, his eyebrows raising high into his hairline. He was feeling a little defensive of his new relationship with Stuart. It was something that had started unexpectedly one late night when Leonard had escaped the war zone in his apartment while Sheldon and Penny had one of their frequent, explosive fights.

"Seeing as your relationship with Stuart is far from heteronormative, I doubt that it can be used as data in the analysis of an heterosexual relationship."

"Just"--Leonard heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose--"she's getting you something, okay."

Sheldon stopped and turned slowly in his chair to face Leonard. "No."

"Yes."

"Leonard, you must stop her."

Leonard rubbed his face, his glasses pushed up into his hair. "I can't stop her, Sheldon."

"Leonard, we cannot replay the Christmas Fiasco of 2008."

"You guys did fine this Christmas," Leonard tried. Sheldon rocketed up from his chair and stalked to the kitchen.

"Is she getting me a material gift or a card? Will there be food or chocolate involved? I doubt she would be very happy if I gave her chocolates, Leonard, not after last time."

"I don't know, Sheldon, she didn't show it to me."

"I must know the specifics, Leonard, if I wish to plan ahead."

"Just make her a card, Sheldon," Leonard said, exasperated. He ran his hand through his hair. "Just...something!"

Sheldon's eyebrows dropped lower on his face and he looked around awkwardly, seemingly asking the couch or the desk for the answer. "I can't make her a card."

"Well do _something_, okay? I've already tried to give you the best case study I could, but Stuart and I are an _anomaly_, so that's out of the question."

"Of course you're an anomaly, there's no need to be sarcastic. You both previously dated women, and only Stuart had even considered men. Besides, I can't very well use two men who had failed relationships with my girlfriend as the basis for my information, could I?" He turned back to his computer, mind whirring endlessly.

Having completed his duty as best friend, Leonard turned back to his pursuit of a last minute additional gift for Stuart. "Charcoal pencils don't smudge as well as the real charcoal," he said to himself, his eyes unfocused and a hand covering his satisfied little grin. "And I do like when they smudge."

~*~

Sheldon sat quietly at his computer desk, the keyboard moved to one side to make room for his notebooks. He pulled the first Social Log from the stack and flipped through the pages one by one. He stopped to make notes, dating his observations, making a timeline of his life so far with Penny.

He added up the days since they had met, divided it by the days he'd lived. He found the exact percentage of his life he had lived with Penny, weighting the days with her more heavily than any other in his life.

He subtracted the number of hours he spent with her to the number of hours he spent working. He was unhappy with result, so he found himself checking and double checking all his data. He reorganized his variables and started working on the math again. Every time, he got the same perturbing result. He frowned, closing the notebook, and moved on to his next equation, his next data set.

He made a flowchart outlining his decisions ever since he had begun to love her. Charting the deviations in his set behavioral patterns over time, ones that slowly morphed into new patterns of their own.

He outlined her decisions since she had begun to love him. He had to speculate about the date, as his data was incomplete on this vital information.

There was a pie chart, a line graph, more flow charts than was perhaps strictly necessary, an entire notebook filled with equations and variables. He spent an entire night typing it into a spreadsheet and printing it out. He felt like there was something final about the last sheet lying innocently in the tray with its ink drying.

~*~

He didn't make her a card. He gave her a binder; a binder filled with all his analysis, all his facts and figures and hypotheses. Neatly hole-punched and stapled and organized chronologically as well as alphabetically -- it was a work of diligent science and intense investment in the outcome.

He wrote a small thesis to her, not a card.

It started with, "When this endeavor began, I would have never expected for the relationship I was forced to cultivate with you to end this way."

Penny didn't know why it ended.

Instead, she just knew that Sheldon the package on her doorstop well before eleven on Sunday, February 14th, and that he wasn't going to take it back. Now, whenever they passed in the hallway, he merely looked down at his feet when he shuffled past her. He waited patiently under the awning outside their building for Raj to pick him up on days that Leonard went to work early or had the day off or slipped away to stay with Stuart. He never invited her to Halo Night, and Leonard's boyfriend made for a convenient fifth to rotate into the schedule.

She didn't burst through their apartment door anymore when her auditions went well. It wasn't long before calling Raj to gush about her role in A Midsummer Night's Dream was the norm, instead of crawling into Sheldon's lap despite his protests of personal space and decorum. Their relationship hadn't been perfect, but it had been something, something real.

All Penny had left was a black binder with the words, "You don't use science to prove you're right, you use science to become right," buried somewhere deep inside.

  
[FIN]

**Author's Note:**

> Fic inspired by this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/701/


End file.
